Social Psychology and Ethics . What are attributions and why are they Essay

Social Psychology and Ethics . What are attributions and why are they so important for understanding human behaviour - Essay Example either to their internal dispositions or to their external situations.† There are actually two kinds of attribution: the dispositional attribution and the situational attribution. An example given is a teacher who wonders whether a child’s hostility either reflects an aggressive personality which is the dispositional attribution or the child is reacting to stress or abuse which is the situational attribution. There are instances where a person, perhaps a girl named Ana does not say much in class while a boy named Jose always talks nonstop (Myers, 1995:613). According to their dispositional attribution, Ana is shy while Jose is outgoing. These attributions are valid for people usually have stable personality traits. But this is not always the case for sometimes Ana could be an outgoing person in a party while Jose is as quiet as Ana when she’s in class. This act of overestimating the influence of personality and underestimating the situation is called the fundamental attribution error. To prove the theory, there is an experiment conducted by David Napolitan and George Goethals with Williams College students and a young woman (Myers, 1995:613). The young woman interacted with the students whom responded differently to her. Beforehand, the students were told that the woman’s behaviour would be spontaneous. Then the students were told that the woman was also told to act friendly or unfriendly. But the students ignored the information. They created different inferences about the woman. If the woman acted friendly, they thought she was a warm person. If the woman acted unfriendly, they thought she was a cold person. In simpler words, the students make their inferences or attributed her behaviour based on the personal disposition even when they were told that the woman’s behaviour was situational, meaning she was just acting that way for the experimental purposes. People often make the same fundamental attribution error (Myers, 1995:614). Having knowledge of